In the rarefied world of fighter pilots, Brian Udell is known as the Supersonic Survivor. He’s the only airman ever to survive ejecting at sea level from a jet going faster than Mach 1, the speed of sound. Incredibly, Udell endured a sustained load of 45 g. Given his weight -- 195 pounds -- that means he faced g-forces of nearly 9,000 pounds, the equivalent of an RV trailer parked right on top of him.

On April 18, 1995, Udell was flying an F-15E tactical jet fighter off the coast of North Carolina on a routine training exercise. An experienced pilot who has flown more than one hundred combat missions, Udell also served as an F-15E instructor. Almost instantly, he sensed something wasn’t right with his plane and it was heading straight toward the ocean.

The entire drama -- from that simple right turn to a life-or-death situation -- had taken only five or ten seconds, fewer than it takes to read this sentence. At 10,000 feet, Udell’s jet shattered the Mach 1 barrier of 769 miles per hour. Udell realized it was too late to save the plane.

“Bail out! Bail out! Bail out!” he commanded.

Udell watched the ****pit canopy slide back. He saw a white flash of light and an enormous wind blast. And then there was only darkness.

Udell’s parachute opened just five hundred feet over the water. He quickly realized his helmet and mask had been ripped off by the windblast. In the hospital, he would learn that all of the blood vessels in his face had exploded, his lips swelled up like hot dogs, and his head inflated to the size of a watermelon.

The life preserver around his neck was no use -- it had been sliced into ribbons during the ejection. His gloves and watch were gone, too. A one-man life raft was supposed to be hanging at the end of a fifteen-foot cord attached to his right hip, and he prayed that it hadn’t been shredded.

One moment he was dry. The next, he was ten feet under water. Udell felt the salt burn his wounds, and he struggled to the surface. Now he was alone some sixty-five miles off the North Carolina coast in five-foot seas without a life vest.
First, he tried a frog kick and realized how badly his legs were damaged. Three of his four limbs didn’t work. Swimming wasn’t really an option. He tried to pull himself onto the life raft, but with only one functioning arm, he couldn’t get leverage. Every time he pulled himself up onto the lip of the raft, a wave knocked him off.

Udell knew he was burning through adrenaline and wouldn’t be able to keep going much longer. Finally, he put his head against the raft, closed his eyes, and said to himself: This is it. I’m going to die tonight. His eyes well up with tears as he remembers his decision to stop fighting for his life and to start praying. Broken and battered, he cried out: “God, I need help.”

Udell prayed to the Lord to let him see his pregnant wife Kristi give birth to their first child. He suddenly felt a surge of energy. Summoning all his strength, he made one last attempt to pull himself onto the raft. This time, instead of knocking him off, a gentle wave nudged him to safety.

Four hours later, a Coast Guard helicopter plucked Udell from the Atlantic. When air force investigators arrived at the hospital, one said, “You’re not supposed to be here. The human body isn’t designed to handle that.”

Udell and his partner Dennis White ejected at almost the same exact moment. The circumstances were almost identical, and yet White was killed instantly.

Why did Udell survive when his partner perished? “I have no clue,” he says. “Those are things that are a mystery.” Like many survivors, Udell is deeply modest about what he endured. “There’s nothing superhuman about me,” he says. “I’m a normal guy.”

Incredibly, within ten months of the accident, Udell was flying F-15s again and went on to serve two more tours in Iraq.

At 3:36 pm on September 7, 1995, Udell witnessed the birth of his son Morgan Daniel. All of his prayers in the Atlantic had been answered. “This is what you fight for. This is what you live for,” he says. “Pain is temporary. This is eternal.”

The human body never ceases to amaze. It's incredibly perplexing to try to imagine this guy surviving, as well as those rare people who manage to survive great drops from airplanes after their parachute malfunctions.